It’s All About Jobs, But it Has to be About Skills First
Businesses, communities and people are excited by the potential opportunities that an increased focus on infrastructure and manufacturing will have on local communities and across the nation.
At first glance a renewed focus on these areas is great news, and then articles and research start to appear like this recent Bloomberg Markets report that “Four-fifths of executives surveyed said that a shortage of sufficiently skilled workers will affect their companies in the next 12 months.” Which is followed up by “Complaints of hard-to-fill factory jobs are backed up by Bureau of Labor Statistics data: 324,000 manufacturing spots were open in November, up from 238,000 a year earlier.”
So what will keep us from actually increasing manufacturing and constructing new infrastructure? The lack of skilled workers.
Fortunately, this is a solvable problem. SkillSmart’s focus on skills development and skills based hiring helps directly address this issue with a scalable solution. We work with employers to identify the skills they need which helps job seekers better understand the skills they need to be qualified or considered for hiring. Then, we show them where they acquire these skills through local education and training resources.
In fact, we have seen a more than 2 to 1 increase in successful hiring outcomes with our clients who use the SkillSmart platform and a 21% increase in the rate of retention.
The impact of skills in the workplace is real and can have both positive and negative results. Lack of skills can hinder success, but we have shown that skills based hiring achieves real, sustainable and positive outcomes to help construction, manufacturing and other important industry sectors grow. This focus on skills is critical to driving the desired growth in our economy, communities and people.
